The specific aim of this proposal is to examine the role of autonomic activity and its self-perception in the experience and expression of emotion. The specific indices to autonomic activity to be investigated are cardiovascular. Eight experiments are proposed to clarify a number of issues concerning the assessment and meaning of heartbeat self-perception, and its possible role in emotional experience. The first experiment proposed is exclusively methodological, and it is addressed to establishing the relative utility of three variations of a technique that has been used in prior research. The subsequent seven studies will utilize the technique that is found to be most effective in the first study. The second and third experiments will evaluate the degree to which beta-adrenergic arousal influences the accuracy of heartbeat detection, and the degree to which gender differences in such task-elicited arousal may explain prior reports of significant sex differences in heartbeat perception ability. Pilot studies indicate that there may be cerebral hemispheric specialization for heartbeat perception. These results are supported from recent reports from other laboratories as well as ours. The fourth, fifth, and sixth experiments are all addressed to an elucidation of the possible role of hemispheric specialization of the interactive role of gender, arousal, and laterality on the perception of heartbeats and their contribution to the self-report of affect.